


the road to hell

by nebulousviolet



Category: Ouran High School Host Club - All Media Types
Genre: Canon Compliant, Crack Treated Seriously, Gen, but it is not consciously meant to be!, i just have brainrot that manifests itself without noticing, i will pepper in the fact that kaoru and kyoya are bffs, kind of, kyoya becomes the heir to the ootori company, no beta we die like men, once again i am furthering my nose piercing kaoru agenda, references the manga heavily but can be read without it, this might accidentally sound kaoru/haruhi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-18
Updated: 2020-09-09
Packaged: 2021-03-06 10:14:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,361
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25967947
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nebulousviolet/pseuds/nebulousviolet
Summary: [“Look! There he goes again!”He waves the flip phone wildly in Kyoya’s face. That’s definitely Akito’s home number; Kyoya’s last burgeoning hope of Kaoru being mistaken deflates like a popped balloon. “This isn’t good,” Kyoya murmurs, mostly to himself. Kaoru silences the phone with a click.]Kaoru, desperate to get to the bottom of why Kyoya's older brother Akito keeps cold-calling him, enlists his old friend to help investigate. Seeing as Akito and Kyoya are practically estranged, Kyoya is less help than he should be.Featuring: questionable hotpots, a healthy debate of the merits of grad school, Haruhi desperately trying to call an intervention, and only a few extreme jumps to conclusions.
Relationships: Hitachiin Kaoru & Ootori Kyouya
Comments: 1
Kudos: 8





	1. one

**Author's Note:**

> another old fic that i found and restarted again! this draws almost exclusively from the manga (e.g the whole kaoru-breaking-into-kyoya's house thing) although i've tried my best to explain stuff so that anime-only people can understand. once again i am Looking Away from bisco hatori's imagined futures and tamaki/haruhi aren't a thing here (while both of them will be making appearances in this fic, i'm not actively planning on pairing haruhi with anyone). honestly i just wanted more kaoru-kyoya bromance content, so i wrote it myself babey!! hopefully this will have four chapters and maybe an epilogue (i've only planned for four chapters tho...look at me...planning), and i'll probably add more tags as i go on. ok hope u enjoy the short introductory chapter!

“Your brother’s an asshole,” Kaoru says, by way of greeting.

Kyoya bites back a response -  _ you made me come all the way over here just to tell me something I already know?  _ \- and busies himself with the menu. This isn’t really his kind of establishment; it’s not Kaoru’s, either, but he does a better job of acting like it is, in his woefully skinny jeans and bright blue hoodie, than Kyoya does. He doesn’t trust any restaurant that serves sushi for less than a thousand yen, and so he pushes his menu away in slight disgust.

“If I said that about  _ your  _ brother, you’d be furious,” he comments dryly, which absolves him of the need to defend Akito - after all, it  _ is  _ Akito that Kaoru is talking about, because he’s pretty sure that Kaoru doesn’t even know what Yuuichi looks like. The fact that he’s met Akito is regrettable enough on its own. “I’d advise you to keep your thoughts on my brother to yourself.”

Kaoru scoffs, acting to all the world as if Kyoya’s asked him to do something impossible, like take Tamaki seriously or beat Mori in a fight (though Kyoya’s willing to admit that the latter is slightly less improbable than the former). “Hikaru isn’t that bad,” he says, which, again, is not exactly a denial of Kyoya’s veiled accusation. Kyoya catches onto this with a shred of amusement that does not make him any more willing to forgive Kaoru for making them meet in some commoner’s haunt. “Anyway, Akito should keep his thoughts to  _ himself  _ first. The bastard won’t stop calling me.”

Kyoya’s eyebrows shoot up in surprise, an uncontrollable reflex. This, he’ll confess, is worth travelling across Tokyo for. What the hell could Akito possibly want with Kaoru? Definitely not business advice; Kyoya’s fairly sure even advanced torture could not elicit an estimation of the Hitachiin company’s profits from either twin. Finances aren’t something they particularly concern themselves with. “I see,” Kyoya says measuredly, because it buys him time, and because it also stops Kaoru from calling Akito any other crass names. “Have you been picking up?”

Kaoru levels him with a look that suggests he’s being extraordinarily dense, which isn’t something that happens to Kyoya particularly often. He doesn’t enjoy it. “Oh, of course, because Ootori Akito and I are such  _ good friends _ ,” he rolls his eyes, sarcasm dripping from every word. “I only picked up the first time. He doesn’t seem like he’s gotten the hint.”

“And what did he say when you picked up?” Kyoya presses. Kaoru snorts.

“His name,” he says. “And then I hung up on him. Did you miss the part where I said your brother is an asshole?”

Kyoya did not miss that part. “If you don’t know what he wants, you’re wasting my time.”   
“Wasting  _ your  _ time?” Kaoru sniffs, and as if on cue, his phone lights up. The ringtone is some grating American pop hit - the one that Tamaki got stuck in his head for a week straight and refused to stop singing in polite company. At least now Kyoya knows why  _ that  _ particular fit of derangement lasted so long. But Kaoru’s not paying any attention to Kyoya’s pointed glare, because he’s pointing at his cell with a mixture of triumph and exasperation. “Look! There he goes again!”   
He waves the flip phone wildly in Kyoya’s face. That’s definitely Akito’s home number; Kyoya’s last burgeoning hope of Kaoru being mistaken deflates like a popped balloon. “This isn’t good,” Kyoya murmurs, mostly to himself. Kaoru silences the phone with a click.

“No shit,” he says, itching at the nose piercing that Kyoya refused to speak to him for a week over. (“I think it suits him,” Haruhi commented mildly, when Kyoya tried to get her to talk some sense into him. Perhaps her commoner’s lifestyle has finally caught up to her and eroded the part of her brain responsible for critical thinking.) “He hates me, so I doubt he wants a friendly chit chat.”

“He does  _ not  _ hate you,” Kyoya responds on autopilot. It’s damage control; his subconscious mind is already screaming about the trade implications of a Hitachiin-Ootori feud, even though he knows that Kaoru has little to do with his family business and that he’s only joking, anyway.

“Does too,” Kaoru retorts, picking up the menu from where Kyoya abandoned it and examining the list of specials. “He’s hated me ever since I started breaking into your bedroom back in high school. Hey, that was fun. I should do that again sometime.”   
“Who’s to say  _ I  _ didn’t hate you for breaking into my bedroom in high school?” Kyoya grumbles, but there’s no heat in it. Mori and Honey’s graduation and Haruhi’s fervent denial of her fledgling feelings for Tamaki meant that Kyoya and Kaoru had, at one point, been the only two members of the Host Club with even a fraction of self-awareness. A dark time, Kyoya recalls. He’d almost been glad of Kaoru’s impromptu visits, such was his desperation for mature conversation.

_ Almost.  _ Kyoya hadn’t gotten that desperate. Haruhi had come to her senses eventually, and now they’re in college and Kaoru can pick up the phone and arrange a meeting with Kyoya like a normal person. Just hopefully in a more high-class environment next time, Kyoya thinks, once again repressing the urge to shudder.

“You want anything?” Kaoru asks. He’s pointing at the menu cheerfully.

“Please don’t tell me you’re actually thinking of eating here,” Kyoya says. “You’re going to contract food poisoning.”   
“No way,” Kaoru says. He leans over, his head close to Kyoya’s, as if he’s giving away a great secret. “Haruhi took me to this place. Don’t tell Milord, though,” he adds with a frown. “He’s still kinda tetchy ever since the big break-up.”   


As if Kyoya needs to be told twice  _ not  _ to send Tamaki into an involuntary tailspin. Still, Haruhi - for all her confusion between the symptoms of a cold and a crush, which is more proof of her emotional constipation than anything else - has a great deal of common sense. She wouldn’t eat somewhere that’s  _ openly  _ in violation of food hygiene standards, at least, and Kaoru seems to have lived to tell the tale. Although that doesn’t necessarily mean anything, Kyoya reminds himself, because he’s watched Kaoru knock back two shitty pizzas and a bottle of  _ sake  _ without so much as blinking an eye, so his immune system is most likely already prepped to take on a boatload of bacteria.

Sensing weakness, Kaoru jabs at a particular dish with a black-painted fingernail. “They do a mean hotpot,” he wheedles, which probably just means that it’s what he had when he went out to eat with Haruhi last time. “We can share and discuss what to do about your godawful brother.”   
  
Kyoya doesn’t bother jumping to Akito’s defence this time.

(Akito  _ is _ godawful, he thinks. He might talk a big game about how Kyoya should accept his role as the third Ootori son, but Kyoya knows a thing or two about repressed feelings from years of being Tamaki’s best friend, and he’s fairly sure that Akito is just projecting his own anguish at being passed over for heir not once, but  _ twice _ . Projection is the pastime of weak and foolish men, if you ask Kyoya. If Akito wants to be heir, he could get up and do something about it, instead of wasting his time insulting Kyoya and his friends. Not, Kyoya thinks with alarm, that he’s planning on being caught dead admitting that he has friends.)

“You’re paying,” Kyoya says primly, because if he’s going to wreck his digestive system, he’s not going to pay for the privilege, and Kaoru seems fine enough with that to go ahead and order, so.

“Maybe he’s just trying to psych me out,” Kaoru muses once the waitress is out of earshot, propping his chin up with his hand. Of course for  _ Kaoru  _ that would be a reasonable motivation. Perhaps Kyoya’s look of disgust is enough to pierce through whatever veneer of Hitachiin-brand idiocy that Kaoru’s wrapped himself in, because it elicits a squawked, “What?” in response.

“That’s not how the Ootori family does things,” Kyoya says, taking his glasses off to polish them. Kaoru gives a little scoff of--well, Kyoya’s not sure, but it sounds indignant. “If we want to threaten somebody, we have a whole private army. For starters.”   
“No wonder you refused to take an arts elective with Tamaki,” Kaoru huffs. It’s a huff that implies Kaoru and his brother bore the brunt of Tamaki’s endless whining after Kyoya shut  _ that  _ particular suggestion down. This had been before Haruhi, of course, when Tamaki was still oddly fixated on ensuring he and Kyoya remained joined at the hip. “That’s not a very creative tactic.”   
  
Kyoya eyes Kaoru warily over the table. Kaoru’s more even-tempered than his twin, less prone to snide comments and wild fits of passion - still, he’s perceptive and an excellent strategist and just because Hikaru got most of the mean streak between the two of them doesn’t make Kaoru some kind of angel. “I don’t think I quite want to know what you’d class as creative, thank you.”

Kaoru almost looks offended. “Well, anyway,” he says. “I don’t suppose you can give Akito a call and ask him why he’s so obsessed with me, can you?”   
Kyoya fixes him with an unimpressed stare. “Now who’s not being creative?”   
“I forgot about your stupid family politics,” Kaoru says, not reacting to the insult. He drums his fingers on the tabletop. Kyoya is once again stricken by the nail polish. “Hikaru and I tell each other everything.”   
  
Kyoya knows that the look on his face right now must be incredulous.

“Apart from the whole Haruhi thing,” Kaoru adds breezily. “But I did tell him eventually! So it doesn’t count.”   
  
The math of love triangles, Kyoya thinks, isn’t something he’s particularly equipped to deal with right now. He’s barely equipped to deal with the situation at hand, actually, because when Kaoru told him to go to an address in Tokyo (and signed off with a stupid emoticon at the end because Honey’s texting habits have finally rubbed off on him), he’d been expecting...well, he’s not sure. An intervention, maybe. Haruhi does keep threatening one, if he doesn’t stop with all the surveillance and manipulation and - well, essentially, she just wants him to get a whole new personality, but Haruhi doesn’t believe that being a businessman is a personality trait, so that’s a dead end in terms of lines of argument. God, Kyoya hates arguing with Haruhi. It makes him feel like he’s been run over afterwards, although Kyoya’s never been run over, so he can’t be all too confident with that metaphor. Or simile. Whatever.

“Akito and I aren’t on the best of terms,” is what comes out of Kyoya’s mouth, instead of the dig at Kaoru’s romantic track record. He surprises himself even as he says it. “Especially since our father did some...restructuring.”   
“You mean disinherited him,” Kaoru says.

“That implies he was ever the heir in the first place,” Kyoya says, and Kaoru’s expression shutters into understanding. “Being the second son isn’t much better than being the third.”   
“I was born second, remember,” Kaoru says. “I would know.”   
  
Kyoya thinks he’s joking. With the twins, it’s hard to be certain.

“He goes out of his way to avoid me, which isn’t too difficult, seeing as neither of us live on the family compound anymore,” Kyoya surmises. “And he blocked my number, so that’s a no-go, I’m afraid.”   
“I wish he’d block mine,” Kaoru groans. He glares at his phone, as if daring it to start ringing again. When it doesn’t, he gives a small nod of satisfaction. It’s absolutely absurd. “So we’re back to square one.”   
“You could always take the initiative,” Kyoya says. “Block him yourself.”   
  
Kaoru laughs, as if Kyoya’s proposed something in line with Tamaki’s general way of thinking, and not the most logical solution to the whole mess. “And what if he breaks into  _ my  _ house?” he asks. As if, Kyoya thinks, Akito would ever be caught dead breaking into anyone’s house, let alone Kaoru’s. “No way. I want to figure out why there’s a stick  _ so far  _ up his ass concerning me, specifically. And depending on whether it’s a great reason or a dumb one, I want to enact revenge accordingly.” 

“Accordingly?” Kyoya repeats, locking onto the most irrelevant part of the entire sentence.

“Haruhi gets on my ass about formal language in my essays all the time, shut up,” Kaoru says, and, yeah, that does sound like Haruhi. “Hey, I think this could be fun. Like the Host Club, except less girls.”   
  
Kyoya tilts his head. “How is this like the Host Club, exactly?”   
Kaoru grins, easy and loose. He really is different than his brother - more relaxed, vibrant, willing to display good humour. “Oh, you know,” he says, gesturing wildly. “An insane plan, the two of us being co-conspirators, a distressing crossover between our personal lives and the professional…”   
“Haruhi has done a good job with the formal language,” Kyoya mutters.

“Of course she has,” Kaoru says easily, agreeing with the compliment like it’s nothing. Kyoya wonders just how much the two of them hang out. He knows Haruhi’s stayed in frequent contact with the twins since graduation - they flew out to visit her in Boston while she was on her foreign exchange, and she’s always wearing a Hitachiin original when Kyoya finds the time to see her himself, as sparingly as that is - and that Kaoru has, secretly, always been her favoured of the pair. He’s just not sure how far that favour extends, exactly. “C’mon, Kyoya. For old times’ sake. Wanna play detective?”   
  
This is ridiculous. 

“If it were anyone else,” Kyoya says heavily, “I’d say no. But seeing as you did such a good job helping me find information on Tamaki’s mother-” and at that Kaoru sends him a winning smile, “-and it’s my brother that’s doing the harassing, fine. I’ll help you get to the bottom of this. Mostly because I can’t understand why the  _ hell _ Akito would do something like this.”

“Hell has many roads,” Kaoru replies. “Not all of them are paved with good intentions.”   
“That’s not how the proverb goes.”   
“I know,” Kaoru says. His tone is still jovial, but there’s a sudden seriousness in his face.

In high school, Kaoru had been ranked third in Class 1-A. Even with minimal effort, he’d excelled. Kyoya thinks about that, and inclines his head - not in agreement, but in something else. Understanding, maybe. “I see.”

“And I’m just saying,” Kaoru says, lighter this time, “I think this is definitely a road leading to hell, good intentions or otherwise.”   
  


He cranes his neck to look at the server headed their way. “Oh!” he says in delight. “I think that’s our hotpot.”


	2. two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Kaoru and Haruhi attempt to find potential dirt on Akito at the Ootori Mansion.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i’m sorry this took so long!! i went back to school last week and so this mostly just languished on my desktop for an eon :/ hopefully i get ch3 up in a more reasonable timeframe!

“I can’t believe you got me to go along with this,” Haruhi complains, following Kaoru up the winding path that leads to the Ootori family mansion. Honestly,  _ Kaoru  _ can’t believe that he got her to go along with this, either, but he knows not to look a gift horse in the mouth. A gift Haruhi? Kaoru ruminates on the wordplay potential while he walks. The puns have always been Hikaru’s thing. “I actually think that this is the dumbest thing you’ve ever done.”

She doesn’t mean it as a challenge, but Kaoru takes it as one anyway.

“The Halloween test of courage tournament,” he suggests. “Dying my hair blue just to come to your house. Oh! I know. Faking sick so you’d take Hikaru on a date instead of me.”

Haruhi winces. “Alright, you’ve got me on the last one,” she says, taking his proffered hand and looping her arm through his. It’s not a romantic gesture, just a familiar one, and it doesn’t hurt the way it might’ve done five years ago. “But that doesn’t make this any less dumb. If anything, it just means you never learn your lesson.”   
“Memory like a sieve,” Kaoru agrees, only half-listening. Kyoya’s got a meeting today, something about international tariffs and universal healthcare and, okay, Kaoru definitely zoned out while reading the email three nights ago. The thing is, Kyoya’s the plan guy - or Tamaki, but Tamaki’s plans are harebrained at best and genuinely terrible at worst, so Kaoru’s on his own; he hasn’t told his twin about Ootori Akito’s sudden obsession with him, because Hikaru’s made a lot of progress since high school but not  _ that much _ and he’s in Milan with their mother, anyway. So it’s up to Kaoru, Kaoru and Haruhi, although she keeps telling him that she’s selling him out at the first opportunity if they get caught. It’s entirely possible that Kaoru’s making this plan up on the spot.

Two weeks ago, when Kaoru dragged Kyoya all the way from his luxury apartment to a humble commoner restaurant, Kyoya’s parting words to him had been  _ don’t be rash _ . Not even necessarily in reference to the whole Akito situation, Kaoru thinks - Kyoya ends pretty much every meeting between the two of them with a similar sentiment, like he thinks that if he  _ doesn’t  _ say it, Kaoru will revert back to the nightmare fifteen-year-old he once was. Still, Kaoru’s pretty sure that breaking into the Ootori compound qualifies as rash.  _ Oops _ . Look, he’s done playing the waiting game. Kyoya’s sly art of subtlety and politics might work for the long-haul, but for the short-haul, Kaoru’s getting pretty sick of waking up to a bajillion missed calls from Ootori Akito every morning. Akito might not live on the main compound anymore, but his childhood bedroom is still here. Maybe they’ll find a bunch of darts thrown at a poster of Kaoru’s face, or something. He’ll take that as a starting point.

Beside him, Haruhi squints at the massive stone-and-marble building that comprises the Ootori family’s home. “It’s bigger than I remember,” she says. It’s not directly to Kaoru - more an observation, or a recitation of fact.

“Yeah,” Kaoru says. It’s not like he lives in  _ poverty  _ at college, and of course he returns home for the holidays, but the Ootori family - they don’t do things by halves.  _ See Akito’s cold-calling.  _ For a moment, he reconsiders the wisdom of his plan. And then he shakes the doubt off, and continues forward. “Kyoya’s bedroom window is around here, somewhere. From there I can probably find Akito’s room.”   
  
He’s considering the best way to climb up the side of the building - how the hell did he get in here at sixteen? - when he realises that Haruhi isn’t beside him anymore. Kaoru glances over his shoulder to find her staring at him, a look of realisation dawning upon her pretty features.

Totally misguided realisation, but realisation nevertheless.

“You’ve done this before,” she says, in a  _ gotcha  _ tone.

“It’s not what it looks like, pervert,” Kaoru rolls his eyes. “I had to. Akito used to yell at me in the drawing rooms if I went in the proper way.”   
“Pervert?” Haruhi repeats. “I’m not the one who used to sneak into people’s bedrooms.”   
“It was consensual!” Kaoru defends himself, before realising that makes it sound worse. “Oh, for God’s- look, when you were busy falling head over heels for Milord and Milord was in some kind of catatonic fit over his mother, Kyoya and I were collaborating on trying to track the damned woman down. And we couldn’t exactly do that at the Host Club, so,” Kaoru says, but judging from Haruhi’s straight face, his efforts are proving fruitless. “Look, we can argue about this later.”   
“You’re my best friend, Kaoru,” Haruhi says sweetly. Which is a nice sentiment and all, but Haruhi’s friends outside of the Host Club aren’t exactly plentiful, so Kaoru knows she’s using this not as a dramatic declaration of her (platonic) affections, but as a means to get information out of him. Kyoya has taught her well. “I won’t think of you any differently.”   
“That’s good, because  _ nothing happened _ ,” Kaoru groans. “I’m pretty sure Kyoya was in love with you at the time, anyway. I know  _ I  _ was.”   
  
_ That  _ takes her by surprise. Haruhi furrows her brow. “Kyoya?”   
“Sure,” Kaoru shrugs. “I was in love with you, Hikaru was in love with you, Milord was in love with you, get with the program. I’m 99% sure Kyoya was, too. Christ, you’re dense. Come on, we don’t have time for this.”

“We’re coming back to this,” Haruhi says, but Kaoru’s figured out a way to get up to the window, so he makes a vague noise of acquiescence and hauls himself up. Mercifully, the window is unlocked, and so he slides himself into Kyoya’s old room with as much grace as he can manage, giving himself a brief pause for breath before turning back to where Haruhi is waiting outside.

“I’ll pull you up,” Kaoru offers, making grabby hands at her. Haruhi looks from the window down to the gravel below.

“No thanks,” she says.

“Don’t be a baby,” he says. “Don’t you trust me?”   
“Not really,” Haruhi sighs, before muttering  _ stupid rich bastards  _ under her breath and awkwardly scrambling up the side of the building. Kaoru latches onto her wrist, surprising himself with the strength of his own grip, and while Haruhi’s tumble onto the carpet can’t be called  _ dignified,  _ exactly, at least there’s no broken bones. Thank God. Kaoru doesn’t even want to  _ think  _ about having to return Haruhi to her father with some kind of injury. He’s perfectly fine with Ranka only disliking Tamaki, thank you very much.

Haruhi’s staring at the plush surroundings with a closed expression, her lips pursed as she takes in the immaculately-made four-poster bed, the crystal chandelier, the plush shag carpet.

“Pretty extravagant, huh?” Kaoru says.

“I was going to say  _ sterile _ ,” Haruhi shakes her head, “but I suppose that works, too.”   
  


Right. She’s got a point, Kaoru realises; Kyoya’s room is devoid of colour, illustrated only in sleek blacks and blinding whites, with little to indicate anything about the former occupant. Not like Haruhi’s room, Kaoru thinks, which is neat but lived-in, her hair clips stacked on the dresser and her best maroon cardigan hanging off the end of her cramped single bed. Not like his own, an explosion of textbooks and photographs and colour samples, discarded swathes of fabric swatches shoved haphazardly in the closet to replace the clothes he packed away for college. Kyoya’s room could belong to anyone. In a way, that’s what makes it so obviously  _ Kyoya’s _ .

“Oh, look,” Haruhi says suddenly, darting forwards. Kaoru’s not sure where she’s going until she stops dead in front of Kyoya’s massive bookcase, all the way on the other side of the room. Isn’t Haruhi supposed to have terrible vision, anyway? “It’s us.”   
And there, tucked in between a hardback copy of Crime and Punishment and a biography of Stalin, is a familiar strip of photobooth pictures. It’s from that day they spent in the mall together, back when the twins and Haruhi were in 1-A; Tamaki is grinning manically at the camera, violet eyes lit up with glee, Honey is squished in with his legs draped over Mori’s lap, both Hikaru and Kaoru are smirking, still mirror images of one another, Haruhi’s mouth is twitching up at the corners as she presses against Kaoru’s shoulder, and then there’s Kyoya on her other side, his face unimpressed and disinterested. Kaoru reaches out to touch the photos. “I thought he threw this away,” he says, because he did. Kyoya had made a big display of pretending to look for the nearest public trash can once he’d been handed his copy of the photos.

But apparently he’d kept them after all.

“Your hair looks better short,” Haruhi says, after a moment, and Kaoru lets go of the photo strip to flick her shoulder.

“You sound like Kyoya,” he huffs.

“Not true,” Haruhi shakes her head. “I defended your nose ring to him.”   
  
Kaoru is oddly touched.

A door slams shut, and both Haruhi and Kaoru jump in alarm. There, in the doorway, is a man in his late twenties - slender built, dark hair trimmed short, suit immaculate and of the highest quality. His face is familiar, and Kaoru roots around in his brain to try to put a name to it while the stranger’s features contort in shock.

“What in the name of-” the man’s voice is replaced by a noise of pleasant surprise. “Haruhi! What are you doing here?”

“Yuuichi,” Haruhi greets awkwardly, sticking her hands in her jacket pockets. “Hi.”   
“Yuuichi,” Kaoru repeats the name, and then brightens as it all comes together. “You’re Kyoya’s oldest brother! How do you know Haruhi?”   


Haruhi flushes. She mumbles something that Kaoru can’t quite hear.

“I helped her with one of her philosophy papers when she was studying in Boston,” Yuuichi explains cheerily, moving to sit down on the edge of Kyoya’s untouched bedspread. “She’s an incredible young woman. I must say, Haruhi, your take on Kant’s approach to-”   
“I thought you were a physician?” Kaoru frowns, recalling Kyoya’s long, long lectures on the Ootori family’s legacy in the medical sphere, and how a career in medicine was the least a son could do to play his role in the family empire. The jab to the ribs he receives from Haruhi tells Kaoru that he’s probably being rude in cutting Kyoya’s brother off like that, but whatever. Kaoru’s got a lot of questions, and very few answers.

“I was,” Yuuichi nods, seeming unbothered by the interruption. “Which involves an ethics seminar, of course. But after Kyo impressed our father and became the unofficial heir, I decided I’d rather devote myself to academia instead.  _ Somebody  _ needs to have the morals in the family.”   
  
Yuuichi lets out a heavy sigh, as if this information is a great burden on him.

“ _ Kyo? _ ” Kaoru whispers to Haruhi in delight. “Why didn’t you tell me any of this?”   
Haruhi sends him a long, irritated look, which is probably answer enough.

“Anyway,” Yuuichi claps his hands together. “I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure?”   
“This is Kaoru,” Haruhi says quickly, before Kaoru can answer for himself. “He went to high school with Kyoya and I.”

“Oh, of course,” Yuuichi beams. “You’re the Hitachiin boy, aren’t you? The one with a twin brother? I should thank you, you know. Kyo’s been so much more pleasant at family dinners ever since he became friends with you boys. And girl!” he adds hurriedly, glancing at Haruhi, as if worried to have caused offence. Haruhi is too busy pinching the inside of Kaoru’s arm to stop him from making fun of Kyoya’s nickname, so he doubts she’s even paying attention.

“It’s no problem,” Kaoru says, repressing a wince. Haruhi’s fingers are nimble; he’s going to have bruises in the morning. “So, um. I should probably explain why we’re here.”   
  
“You should,” Haruhi says. “Because this was all your idea, after all.”   
  


To be fair, she did warn him that she’d throw him under the bus. Not, Kaoru thinks, that it makes the betrayal sting any less. Is this how Jesus felt on the cross?   
  


“Your brother’s harassing me,” is what comes out of Kaoru’s mouth, instead of an actual explanation. Yuuichi’s mouth forms a perfect ‘o’ of disbelief.

“Kyoya?” he asks.

“No, Akito,” Kaoru clarifies, realising that, of course, Yuuichi would assume that they’re talking about Kyoya. “He and I have had a few, ahem, disagreements, and now he won’t stop calling my cell phone, and even  _ Kyoya  _ thinks it’s weird. But Kyoya’s busy doing business things and I got impatient and called Haruhi. So we-”   
Haruhi levels a glare at him.

“ _ I _ ,” Kaoru corrects hastily, “decided to investigate and that investigation has, unfortunately, culminated in us breaking into your house to figure out why Akito wants my blood.”   
“You don’t know that he wants your blood,” Haruhi says.   
_ “You’re  _ the one who called all rich people parasitic leeches when you were drunk,” Kaoru fires back, and Haruhi opens and closes her mouth before pinching him on the arm again.

Yuuichi, meanwhile, is frowning.

“We’re very sorry,” Haruhi adds. “Kaoru overreacted and-”   
“No, this is very strange, you’re right,” Yuuichi cuts her off. Haruhi blinks.

“What?”   
“Akito has never been the most subtle man alive,” Yuuichi intones, and Kaoru holds back a snort. Somewhere, a host of violins start playing a dramatic melody. “It all started when we were children…”   
  
Kaoru exchanges glances with Haruhi, who appears utterly unphased. “You seem used to this,” he says. “It’s not just me who can hear the violins, right?”   
“Yeah, this is his dramatic monologue,” Haruhi shrugs. “I’ve heard it before. The music comes and goes.”   
  
True to form, the violins swell to one last final note, and Yuuichi concludes with, “Still, Akito directly antagonising someone like that is incredibly out of character. He was raised better than that. But I don’t think you’ll find anything here. And he hasn’t mentioned anything to me about it, so I’m afraid  _ I  _ can’t be of any use, either.”   
Yuuichi seems genuinely distressed by this. Kaoru walks over to give him an awkward pat on the arm, attempting to conceal his disappointment. Damn, all of this for nothing? The look on Haruhi’s face says she’s going to kill him. Well, Kaoru thinks, she can at least do him a favour and recap Yuuichi’s important exposition on the way home. The violins had kind of made it difficult to hear, and it’s not like  _ Kyoya’s  _ going to willingly sit down and explain all of his family secrets.

“Don’t worry about it,” Kaoru says. “Thanks for not siccing a bunch of Ootori secret police on us.”   
“I would never!” Yuuichi cries.  _ How the hell is he related to Kyoya?, _ Kaoru wonders. “Listen, I’m on far more sociable terms with Akito than Kyoya is. Haruhi has my number. If I can get him to say anything that might be useful, I’ll text her the information, alright?”   
Haruhi looks as if she’s about to protest, then stops herself. “That’s very kind of you, Yuuichi,” she says instead, and, oops, Kaoru is  _ definitely  _ getting murdered tonight. 

*

They get to leave the Ootori mansion out of the front door, thank God, although not until they convince Yuuichi that neither of them want tea, and that they  _ definitely  _ don’t want to attend the Ootori family dinner tonight. Kaoru gives Haruhi a thirty second headstart before he bumps her shoulder and says, “I can’t believe you willingly asked anyone for help.”   
  
He’s expecting Haruhi to laugh it off, or roll her eyes, or something of that kind. Instead, she draws her eyebrows together, and toys with the hem of her blouse. “I didn’t,” she says. “Kyoya called me, and I mentioned how much I hated that class, and next thing I know Ootori Yuuichi is offering to privately tutor me, free of charge. It was so weird that I just tried to forget about it.”

“It’s not that weird,” Kaoru says, suddenly unable to prevent his next sentence from spilling out of his mouth. “Anyone else in the Host Club would’ve done the same.”

“But Kyoya’s-“ Haruhi cuts herself off, frustrated. Kaoru knows what she means. Kyoya is inscrutable in a way that not even college has managed to unravel, always with  _ some  _ kind of ulterior motive (if not as Machiavellian as it once might have been). 

Haruhi has always hated asking for any kind of assistance. It must be difficult, Kaoru thinks, for her to see why anyone would want to give it so freely. Especially when that  _ anyone  _ is Kyoya.

“I think there’s such a thing as reading into things  _ too  _ deeply,” Kaoru says instead of all of that. “What’s the harm in taking something at face value?”

Haruhi fixes him with a deeply unimpressed look, the sort that Kaoru hasn’t seen much of since high school. How he’s missed this. “That’s how people get scammed, Kaoru.”

“Sucks to be them,” Kaoru grins. “Now can you  _ please  _ tell me all of Yuuichi’s tragic backstory? Those violins were  _ so _ loud.”

**Author's Note:**

> kaoru's road to hell quote is what inspired me to write this whole fic, actually. it's a remix of the old proverb, and also the neal schusterman line: "good intentions pave many roads. not all of them lead to hell", which is pretty much the antithesis of kyoya and his shitty motives, haha


End file.
